#1
"Lifting a ban but then saying that only harmful witchcraft will be prosecuted, creates a very similar scenario to the Middle Ages. "Proof" was often required and awful methods were used to ascertain proof."
SANAA - Yemeni opposition parties on Sunday named a single candidate to challenge long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the presidential elections planned for next September. Leaders of five main opposition parties voted at a meeting in the capital Sanaa to field independent politician Faisal bin Shamlan, 72, as their sacrificial lamb joint candidate for the presidential vote.
So who do we like here?
Grouped under the umbrella of the Joint Meeting Grouping, the five parties include the leading Islamic-oriented Islah party and a communist party that ruled South Yemen for 12 years before the country merged with North Yemen in 1990.
Bin Shamlan is widely respected, particularly in the southern provinces of this impoverished Arab country, for his public stands against corruption. He served as an oil and infrastructure minister in South Yemen. After the reunification, he was appointed oil minister in 1994, but he resigned one year later to protest corruption in the oil industry sector. Yemen is a small oil producer which pumps some 470,000 barrels per day.
Although a dozen of politicians have announced an intention to run for the presidential elections, bin Shamlan is expected to be the main rival of incumbent President Saleh in the presidential polls. Saleh, who has been at the helm since 1978, announced last week that he would seek re-election, having lied about retracting a promise to step down he made last year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/03/2006 00:00 ||
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Kuwaits Cabinet resigned yesterday as was expected after parliamentary elections in which Kuwaitis elected a new legislature of mostly reformers. Kuwaits state-owned television said Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah, who headed the outgoing Cabinet, submitted the resignations of all 16 members to the countrys emir, according to the requirements of the constitution. The ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, accepted them, it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2006 00:00 ||
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Saudi Arabia will build a city named after Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in a tsunami-affected area of Sri Lanka, Mohammed Mahmud Al-Ali, Saudi ambassador in Colombo who is currently on a visit to the capital, told Arab News yesterday. Dubbed King Abdullah Model City, the integrated facility will have 500 houses, a clinic, a mosque, a school, a childrens playground and a shopping complex, Al-Ali said, adding that the groundbreaking ceremony of the multimillion rupee project was launched recently in the district of Ampara, some 300 km from the capital Colombo. The envoy said that under a special program funded by the Saudi Charity Campaign (SCC), the Kingdom would construct 1,000 houses in the tsunami-affected areas, which would include 500 within the proposed city, and the rest in the districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Hambantota.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
What, no Buddhist or Hindu temples?
Posted by: ed ||
07/03/2006 1:23 Comments ||
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#2
Big mistake. This will just be a festering wound producing "militants" just what Sri Lanka doesn't need more of but this time with an "islaic flavor"
#4
I hope this will be more successful than the usual Saudi building projects. They've a tradition of building apartment blocks completely unsuited to the needs and desires of the targetted tenants, which stand empty forever after.
#5
Dubbed King Abdullah Model City, the integrated facility will have 500 houses, a rifle range, a clinic, a arms dump, a mosque, a chemistry lab, a school, another arms dump, a childrens playground and a car bomb assembly shop a shopping complex,
Posted by: Steve ||
07/03/2006 8:46 Comments ||
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DHAKA - Millions of Bangladeshis were stranded on Sunday as opposition parties enforced a countrywide transport shutdown amid tight security and scattered violence, police and witnesses said. They said buses, trains and ferries were mostly idle as hundreds of opposition leaders and activists blockaded terminals in the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere across the country.
At least 20 people were injured in clashes between opposition and pro-government activists in the southern coastal town of Barisal, 300 km (190 miles) from Dhaka, witnesses said.
Authorities deployed more than 8,000 extra police and paramilitary troops in the capital, and more in other cities, trying to avert violence and damage to property.
A 14-party alliance led by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, chief of the opposition Awami League, called the shutdown in an attempt to force the government to implement electoral reforms before a general election due next January.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#3
News reports have Calderon with a 1 point over Obrador: With 97.98 percent of polling stations reporting, Calderon of the National Action Party had 36.37 percent and Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party had 35.37 percent.
Posted by: ed ||
07/03/2006 18:09 Comments ||
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#4
the other 19% went for John McCain
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2006 18:18 Comments ||
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#5
doh! 29% I can add, dammit! :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2006 18:19 Comments ||
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#6
Obrador has also claimed the win. Recounts to conclude after Mexican Supreme Court ruling, expected in January 2010.
Mexico's presidential election was too close to call Sunday with voters bitterly divided between a leftist offering himself as a savior to the poor and a conservative warning his rival's free-spending proposals threaten the economy. Electoral officials were conducting a quick count of the votes, and were hoping to declare a winner later Sunday. But they warned that they would hold off perhaps for days if neither candidate had a large enough advantage.
Mexico's two main television networks did not release the results of their exit polls, saying the numbers favor the 'righty' candidiate and they refuse to believe their eyes the difference was smaller than their margin of error. Felipe Calderon, 43, of Fox's National Action Party, has been running an exceedingly close race with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 52, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. The Institutional Revolutionary Party's Roberto Madrazo, 53, had been trailing in third place.
#1
I'm embarrassed to say I'm not up to speed on following this election.
What thoughts are there on how either guy will be with consideration to illegals in this country?
If the living conditions are improved down there it may help us out here.
I won't be able to watch comments until late tomorrow.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/03/2006 0:59 Comments ||
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#2
The lefty's a commie - expect much more immigration.
#7
a2u, not too sure about that. He's the only one who has publicly stated that having around 10% of the population up in the US because there are no jobs for them in Mexico is a disgrace. The other guys are the ones that virtually encourage more of their potential troublemaking young 'uns citizens to go up north and send big checks home.
#8
True, SB. But he's also a gateway Pol for Hugo. The Chinese and Iranians will be quick to follow. As with most Mexican elections, there are no good choices. Perhaps Chris Adams isn't busy right now.
In any case, Mexico has a better system guarding against election fraud today than we have in most of the United States. Its voter ID program is much more rigorous. It has paper ballots, which take more time to count, but which also provide a paper trail for recounts. It has a national superintending electoral administrative agency, which our federal system of holding elections would not permit.
The Mexican requirement for a photo ID / Voter card, rigorously checked voter roles, and ensuring that no one votes more than once an election seems to be anathema to activists / Democrats in our country. Wonder why?
He's the only one who has publicly stated that having around 10% of the population up in the US because there are no jobs for them in Mexico is a disgrace.
This is about as transparent as Hillary's attempts to be "moderate".
#12
I don't know why they call it "too close to call". The bloggers I've seen show the PAN winning pretty conclusively (much better than expected). It sounds to me like the 2004 election which was "stolen" from John F'ing Kerry (AKA Lurch)
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/03/2006 12:29 Comments ||
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#13
All of these "squeaker" elections worldwide over the past six years are extremely interesting. Neither the traditional conservatives nor mainstream liberals/social democrats seem to be able to gain a decisive majority anywhere. In the past this behavior has always presaged a major re-alignment of the stars, so to speak. What's interesting is that the deadlock has gone on for so long and is truly worldwide.
The problem with really stable systems is when they finally do get overwhelmed, they tend to break down catastrophically. It's a tautology actually. If you design a flood control system to deal with the 100-year flood, things are going to get nasty when the 500-year flood comes. You never notice all of the other catastrophes that the 100-year flood control system neatly carried into the sea. The other bad thing is that building a 100-year systems encourages people to develop areas that they never would have developed otherwise -- the risk would have been too high. So when the breakdown of the highly stable system comes, you get much more destruction than if you had never built it in the first place.
Did I tell you all that I am refurbishing this beautiful old Moisin Nagant that I bought in '89? It's one of the two million that Westinghouse made during WWI for the Czar. It's the long barrel version, not the sawn off type that the Soviets made later on. Supposedly it came from a Finnish armory. At first I thought that the bore was pitted,, but it turned out that there was just so much fouling in the rifling that it looked bumpy. After half a bottle of Hoppes, and a couple hundred patches and a couple of bore brushes, I'm getting ready to break out the carburetor cleaner. I'm just plain running out of time!
#14
I don't think it matters which one of them wins...they'll keep on exporting their social problems to the US (with the connivance of BOTH our political parties) and demanding a veto over our immigration policies (again with the connivance, etc...).
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
07/03/2006 17:14 Comments ||
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Forget politics, oligarchs and Chechnya. What Russians really want to ask their leader is when he lost his virginity, when he will legalise marijuana and when a giant fictional octopus sleeping at the bottom of the ocean will awaken.
These are at least some of the most popular questions being put by Russian web surfers to President Vladimir Putin on the Yandex website in preparation for a July 6 interactive Internet question-and-answer session.
Putin will respond via Internet in his first-ever webcast to some of the questions posted through the BBC Online and Yandex sites, where queries can also be voted on, as part of a Kremlin media charm offensive ahead of the G8 Summit in Saint Petersburg on July 15-17.
Ranked most popular on Yandex Monday with 8,080 votes was a question on what possessed Putin to kiss a young boy on the stomach during a walkabout in a Kremlin courtyard last Wednesday
Putin stopped to talk to the boy, who was standing by with tourists. In images shown on Russian state television, Putin crouched down, lifted the boy's shirt and kissed him on the stomach.
The curious incident has unleashed gossip and jokes on Russian websites over the past week.
Among other popular questions for Putin were queries on whether the president had ever tried marijuana and whether he would legalize purchase of cannabis.
One question for the Russian president from a source identified as a 17-year-old female named Nastya asked: "At what age did you start meeting girls and when did you have sex for the first time?".
Russian surfers also asked when conscription service into the Russian army will end, why there is so little affordable housing and what Putin was planning to do about an increase in racist violence in the country.
Queries on increasing controls on a wave of immigration from former Soviet republics and making the Crimean peninsula, a mostly Russian-speaking province of Ukraine, a part of the Russian Federation were also among the top-ranked.
More than 3,000 surfers voted on a question from Viktor, 29, on what Putin thought about the re-awakening of the Cthulhu, a fictional octopus-like creature invented by 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.
Popular questions posted on the BBC Online website, by contrast, were more concentrated on current events.
They centred on the problem of racism in Russia, corruption, the influence of powerful tycoons in the country's economy, the future of the war-torn province of Chechnya and Russia's role on the international stage.
#3
The Octo vs Nostradamus "hideous beast" - yet another Ollie Stone production of almost a Madonna film, when the Mother of the Gods throws a hissy fit. Run away, Godzilla, run away like a girley raptor D *** you, iff you value your claws and fire-breath.
The 33-year-old man who drove through crowd barriers at Berlin's football World Cup fan zone Sunday, injuring 25 people, is being investigated for attempted homicide.
Police said Monday the man, a German of Indian descent, would be brought before a judge later in the day to face formal arraignment.
The 55-year-old woman with him in the car was his mother, according to local media reports. She was released on Monday, nearly 24 hours after the incident, which left 25 people injured.
A boy aged 11 suffered several broken ribs. He was the only person with serious injuries. Also hurt were 14 men, eight women, and two other children aged one and eight.
The driver was apparently a person "who wanted to hurt other people or draw attention to himself," Interior Senator Ehrhart Koerting said late Sunday. There was no clear motive for the act.
It happened when the area - where 750,000 fans have gathered for matches before the capital's landmark Brandenburg Gate - was unusually empty, as no World Cup games were played Sunday.
A search of the vehicle yielded no evidence of any explosives. "There was no bomb in the car and it was not a major attack," Koerting said.
Witnesses said the car broke through a first barrier, followed a zig-zag course and then hit a second barrier line and came to a halt.
"I would say it was going at 40 to 50 kilometres an hour - it looked like it was deliberate," one witness said.
Berlin city government spokesman Michael Donnermeyer said authorities had no plans to close the sprawling party zone, a 2.5- kilometre stretch of a wide boulevard that cuts through Berlin's forested Tiergarten park.
via http://newsbusters.org/
Speech given by Katharine Graham (editor of Washington Post)
Sunday, April 20, 1986; Page C1
Tragically, however, we in the media have made mistakes. You may recall that in April 1983, some 60 people were killed in a bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut. At the time, there was coded radio traffic between Syria, where the operation was being run, and Iran, which was supporting it.
Alas, one television network and a newspaper columnist reported that the U.S. government had intercepted the traffic. Shortly thereafter the traffic ceased. This undermined efforts to capture the terrorist leaders and eliminated a source of information about future attacks.
Five months later, apparently the same terrorists struck again at the Marine barracks in Beirut; 241 servicemen were killed.
This kind of result, albeit unintentional, points up the necessity for full cooperation wherever possible between the media and the authorities. When the media obtains especially sensitive information, we are willing to tell the authorities what we have learned and what we plan to report. And while reserving the right to make the final decision ourselves, we are anxious to listen to arguments about why information should not be aired.
See: "Judicial overreaching; Examples of:"
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday barring the Navy from using a type of sonar, allegedly harmful to marine mammals, during a Pacific warfare exercise scheduled to begin this week.
The order comes three days after the Navy obtained a six-month national defense exemption from the Defense Department allowing it to use "mid-frequency active sonar."
Environmental groups had sued to stop the sonar use during the exercises off Hawaii. The sonar portion of the war games was set to start Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in her order that the plaintiffs "have shown a possibility that RIMPAC 2006 will kill, injure, and disturb many marine species, including marine mammals, in waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands."
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2006 17:44 ||
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#1
The Chinese must be laughing their asses off at us right about now...
#2
I tell you guys, its long past time these people were elected. Almost a hundred years since we made Senators all stand for the consent of the governed. Enough is enough. 12 year terms. Gives them enough time to make asses of themselves to show their true colors, but not long enough to make permanent damage.
#3
Looking at the composition of the Senate, I'm not sure that change worked out so well. This may have to go to SCOTUS as the intermediate stop appears to be the 9th Circus Court. But it will get straightened out.
LOS ANGELES A federal judge Thursday dismissed all charges against a Chinese-American woman accused of using a sexual affair with an FBI agent to gain unauthorized access to classified documents.
U.S. District Judge Florence Marie Cooper dismissed the case for prosecutorial misconduct, finding that the government had purposely made sure that Katrina Leung, a socialite with extensive China contacts, would not have access to her former lover, James J. Smith, for information regarding her case.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2006 19:06 Comments ||
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#5
Tom Clancy guest stars on tonight's very special episode of JAG:
"Where is he?"
"Somewhere dead ahead, but I can't get enough of a read for a firing solution."
"Yankee search, Jonsey!"
"Aye-aye, Cap'n!"
"Not so fast, buster! There's an injunction."
Posted by: Mike ||
07/03/2006 19:27 Comments ||
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#6
LOL
Posted by: Matt ||
07/03/2006 20:13 Comments ||
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Despite getting a nuclear deal through with the US, India has taken exception to the US supplying 36 F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan. Reacting to the reports, the MEA spokesperson said on Monday that this would not be conducive to improving ties between India and Pakistan.
"This has been the subject of discussion with the US government in the past. In fact, the Prime Minister himself has expressed disappointment at the US approach to president Bush," the spokesperson said.
Pakistan has also requisitioned 130 Harpoon missiles from the US, both submarine and surface launched, to be used on its P-3 aircraft that Islamabad has got from the US.
The improved variety of missiles will have an improved ability to attack in more congested environments. Clearly, these are not directed against terrorists, said sources, but against India.
However, the US defence department has reportedly assured Congress that the weapons systems asked for in these fighters would not alter or reduce India's military advantage.
In a statement to the Congress, the Pentagon reportedly said: "Release of the weapons systems will neither affect the regional balance of power nor introduce a new technology, as this level of capability already exists in other countries in the region."
Pakistan wants its F-16s to come equipped with some big ticket defence equipment like 500 Aim-120C, five advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM), 12 AMRAAM training missiles, 200 AIM-9M-8/9 Sidewinder missiles, 500 joint direct attack munitions (JDAM), among others.
Posted by: john ||
07/03/2006 19:45 ||
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#1
No shit. If I were India, I'd be against the US selling the Pakiwaki's anything useful too. Big duh here.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
07/03/2006 20:45 Comments ||
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#2
I'm an American and I'm against the US selling ANY weapons to PakLand.
The trials have been delayed so long that most of the Khmer Rouge leadership is dead, but the Cambodians should count their blessings: Carla Del Ponte has not yet been spotted in their country.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
She will be there soon.
Bet on it.
Posted by: john ||
07/03/2006 10:45 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Saudi Arabia will build a city named after Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in a tsunami-affected area of Sri Lanka, Mohammed Mahmud Al-Ali, Saudi ambassador in Colombo who is currently on a visit to the capital, told Arab News yesterday. Dubbed King Abdullah Model City, the integrated facility will have 500 houses, a clinic, a mosque, a school, a childrens playground and a shopping complex, Al-Ali said, adding that the groundbreaking ceremony of the multimillion rupee project was launched recently in the district of Ampara, some 300 km from the capital Colombo. The envoy said that under a special program funded by the Saudi Charity Campaign (SCC), the Kingdom would construct 1,000 houses in the tsunami-affected areas, which would include 500 within the proposed city, and the rest in the districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Hambantota.
DHAKA - Millions of Bangladeshis were stranded on Sunday as opposition parties enforced a countrywide transport shutdown amid tight security and scattered violence, police and witnesses said. They said buses, trains and ferries were mostly idle as hundreds of opposition leaders and activists blockaded terminals in the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere across the country.
Mexico's presidential election was too close to call Sunday with voters bitterly divided between a leftist offering himself as a savior to the poor and a conservative warning his rival's free-spending proposals threaten the economy. Electoral officials were conducting a quick count of the votes, and were hoping to declare a winner later Sunday. But they warned that they would hold off perhaps for days if neither candidate had a large enough advantage.
